The All Jamaican Library

By Thomas MacDermot and Mint Editions

Conceived by Jamaica’s first Poet Laureate, Thomas MacDermot, The All Jamaican Library is where literary publishing in Jamaica found its footing. This indigenous imprint was designed to put forth work written by Jamaicans about Jamaica while being reasonably priced in order to remain accessible to the locals. Though it only ran for six years, MacDermot published two of his own novels, Becka’s Buckra Baby (1904) and One Brown Girl and ¼ (1909) comprising “The Story of Noel,” as well as E.A. Dodds’ Maroon Medicine (1905)—the first collection of stories by a Caribbean writer—and W.A. Campbell’s short story, Marguarite: A Story of the Earthquake (1907).

The first work from the series, Becka’s Buckra Baby, is a tragic story of race and class following the life of Noel Maud Bronvola. Wanting to honor her father after his death, Noel dedicates herself to helping others, eventually bringing a gift to a young child that has unexpected consequences. The second work, Maroon Medicine, is a collection of short stories that focus on the lighter sides of daily Jamaican life. Inspired by the spider-trickster spirit Anasi, these stories are a celebration of West African folklore. The third work, Marguerite: A Story of the Earthquake, is a short story following the tragic romance between George Hodlin and Marguerite. Nurturing Marguerite back to health and attempting to win her affections, the young lover’s lives and plans for the future are upended once an earthquake strikes Kingston. George now away at school and Marguerite the apple of Herr Otto Tiez’s eye, the pair try to decipher how love can last when held against the temptation of comfort and lasting security. The fourth and final work, One Brown Girl and ¼ is a spiritual successor to Becka’s Buckra Babythat focuses on Liberta Passley. Despite her beauty, wealth, education, and social standing, Liberta Passley is unable to feel satisfied. Feeling as though she must reject her African heritage, she makes a decision that unwittingly welcomes disaster into her life.

Professionally typeset with a beautifully designed cover, this exclusive edition of The All Jamaican Library is the foundation of Caribbean writing, reimagined for modern readers.

Since our inception in 2020, Mint Editions has kept sustainability and innovation at the forefront of our mission. Each and every Mint Edition title gets a fresh, professionally typeset manuscript and a dazzling new cover, all while maintaining the integrity of the original book.

With thousands of titles in our collection, we aim to spotlight diverse public domain works to help them find modern audiences. Mint Editions celebrates a breadth of literary works, curated from both canonical and overlooked classics from writers around the globe.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Mint Editions
• Release date: Jun 6, 2023
• ISBN: 9781513210452

Thomas MacDermot

Thomas MacDermot (1870-1933) was a Jamaican poet, novelist, and newspaper editor. Born in Clarendon Parish, he was raised in a family of five children in Trelawny. After receiving his education at Falmouth Academy and at the Church of England Grammar School in Kingston, he remained in the capital to teach and become a journalist. Starting at The Jamaica Post and The Daily Gleaner, he moved to the Jamaica Times, where he would serve as editor for twenty years. In 1899, he launched a popular short story contest for young writers, helping further the careers of famed poet Claude McKay and journalist H. G. de Lisser. By 1903, he established All Jamaica Library, a low-cost series of short fiction by Jamaican authors. MacDermot also wrote his own works of fiction under the anagrammatic penname “Tom Redcam.” Becka’s Buckra Baby (1903) is considered a landmark of Jamaican literature and helped distinguish the Caribbean as a hotspot for modern writing. Following his death in England, MacDermot was posthumously appointed Jamaica’s first Poet Laureate.

Book preview

BECKA’S BUCKRA BABY

MADONNA

The Night on the Town has fallen,

And the Gar Lamps, few and far,

Out-flame like the picket fires

On the rim of a lonely war.

The lights of the Town, Madonna,

Are the eyes of a Soul’s despair;

The streets are the thoughts, Madonna,

That are dreary and dark and bare.

The lights that the World affords us,

Though we win where they burn their best

Reveal but the pain, the hurry,

The stir of a street’s unrest.

And we turn from the street’s confusion,

From the toil and the City’s pain,

From all that the heart desires.

And all that the hand can gain:

For what if we win it or lose it,

The praise that the World bestows,

It fades like a flower gathered,

It dies like a withering rose.

Ah, the calm of God, Madonna,

It is far from the streets away,

And seeking that calm. Madonna,

The hearts of thy children stray.

Thomas MacDermot

Jamaica.

I

THE FATHER OF NOEL

All the rough world passed by,

All that it could not try,

When it weighed act with act,

And balanced fact with fact.

Noel Maud Bronvola, this was her name, and she could hardly ever remember repeating it to another in full without hearing the following comment expressed, or seeing it suppressed in the eyes that regarded her:—

Noel, for a girl? And then her mother was want to reply:

Yes, her father would have it so. She was born on Christmas Day.

Everyone, who knew him, or nearly everyone, had said that Jack Bronvola was a peculiar man; and they were not slow to tell his peculiarities in detail, if you cared to hear them.

He gained a position in business while still a young man which meant for him in a decade or two, a fortune equal to any in the Island. That position he resigned a month or two after Noel’s birth, because he considered the policy that he was called upon to execute, was unjust and cruel. Men generally find good reasons for not resigning £1,000 a year, steadily increasing to thrice that amount; and a man who does otherwise must justly be considered peculiar.

He was a man whose ability no one ever cared to dispute; and his family connections were influential and far reaching. Other positions scarcely less good were something more than open to him; but they had their objections, as he saw matters, and the end was, that he secured a post under Government which was worth barely £300, to start with.

Still the way lay clear before him for ascent. His ability soon told, and his prospects of early promotion grew bright. But unkind Fortune again interfered, and brought another opportunity for the exercise of that peculiar mind of Bronvola’s.

Among his subs was a youngster whose father was a Magnate of the largest dimensions, literally and in a proprietorial sense, and of a power and influence not below those of any man between sea and sea through all Jamaica. All of which did not prevent the Magnate’s youngster being a scoundrel of the first water. He drank, to the confusion of office work, and Bronvola rated him; he gambled, and this peculiar man both warned him and watched him. When it came to embezzlement, Bronvola put his hand out and crushed the young fool—like a fly.

So directly and carefully did he move, and with a determination so composed and unshakably firm, that, willing as the Authorities, or some of them, might have been, in view of the Magnate’s, greatness, to let the quarry break the net and escape, they dared not allow it; and so prison doors received the Magnate’s son on the day when they received the son of old Christie Downley, Parade and Sollas Market higgler, convicted of burglary in a Kingston suburb and of carrying off a watch and £5.

Both thieves, said Bronvola and was satisfied.

Yet common-sense told him, and, as he knew it would, Time ultimately proved it true to him, that he on this day struck dead his chance of promotion. The Magnate’s arm might be too short to save. It was quite long enough to destroy; and his hate was as long as his life. Bronvola, a man of serene soul, met his hate without a tremor; and lived without bitterness towards the Governors who feared the Magnate more than they feared God.

Noel was only twelve when her father died. For many years she knew of Jamaica only what Kingston, reveals; yet she loved the Island, and this intense love was wonderful; for Kingston is in ugliness past all endurance, and in wickedness beyond all imagination. Her father had been posted in the City and there he died in the full tide of his days, his life laid down unshrinkingly to redeem that of his daughter.

Noel lay sick of Diphtheria and was dying when her father saved her life and lost his own by sucking the breathing tube clear of the deadly fungus. He did it calmly, quietly, without outward sign that the heroic resolve he had taken was more than ordinary.

It probably means death, the Doctor said, warning thus a man who he knew required no warning.

I know, replied Bronvola, and did the deed of salvation for her and of death for himself.

Noel, still weak and wan from the struggle with the Mortal Foe, had at the very last when the end came for her Father, clung to him with a kiss that seemed to drive the two lives into one, like two flames commingling. She was too truly his daughter, and his mother had been too truly his helpmate and too thoroughly understood him, to thank him, or to praise that last great sacrifice. The wife joined hands with the Doctor and did all that skill and knowledge could to give the victory and life to the man who had dared to meet and face Death at the moment when His prey seemed irrevocably his own; but never once had she spoken what she thought and felt concerning that deed of self-sacrifice and supreme daring. Between father and mother and daughter there was the communion of souls. Words were not needed.

When Noel gave him that last, long, lingering, passionate kiss, her words were the simplest she could utter. She said,

Goodbye, Father. But the eyes that poured their gaze on his spoke as the pure Angels of God speak, naked life to naked life; and the eyes of the dying man spoke back to her in full understanding, and with the deep, untroubled peace and flawless trust of the Soul that has been true to the Light.

So out into the Unknown passed the life of John Bronvola; and in the great heart of a girl there remained abiding the priceless resolution to follow worthily after that Soul into which her own had twice flown, at the mystic borders of Life and Death; to follow worthily and well, through things temporal and transitory, to pass with his untroubled peace, into things unseen and eternal. A priceless deed, that deed of Bronvola; never publicly acclaimed by pen or pulpit, known to men and women fewer than one counts fingers on a hand; but to reach to and through the great distance of years, and to be felt in lives innumerable.

The last struggle had quivered into quietude and perfect rest; the last, faint gasp of life on the hitherward side of the Vail was hushed and ended; the Widow wept softly as she prayed; and, from the lingering by the dead, an anxious Nurse strove to lead Noel away, dreading lest, weak as she was, Death should turn ere he left that house of Life and strike her also—it was then that perhaps by some sudden touch of God’s hand upon his brain the old Clergyman who stood with these women in the Chamber of Death spoke the words Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friend. This he said, not knowing what manner of death Bronvola had died: but pointing these latest born of the Children of Sorrow to a hill named Calvary. But surely it did not put them further from the Saviour of the World that mother and daughter were brought by the sublimely simple and pathetic words into the presence of a nearer sacrifice.

So passed Jack Bronvola, a man whom the world termed eccentric and peculiar, and very correctly so; for eccentricity is relative, and depends on where we place the centre; and peculiarity is relative and depends on what we make the standard.

The money that he left his wife and only child, gave them decent support, since he owned the house in which he passed from this life; but it allowed little to be laid out in the luxury of travelling, and thus it was destiny for Noel to pass her girlhood in Kingston. They had not many friends, the Bronvolas. A man who begins with £300 and ends with £1,000 will have no lack of friends. And he who has his £300 and sticks to it all through, will not be without some friends; but the man who has £1,000 and descends to £300; then with his own hand bars a re-ascent, that man will have few friends, indeed; a sordid bit of fact this.

II

NOEL HERSELF

"Mixed___________

In spite of the mortal screen."

Jack, his wife and Noel were very happy, almost perfectly so, till it pleased God to take the father; then the mother and the daughter went forward again, less happy in that he was no longer with them in the flesh; but all in all to each other, and sufficient.

And so year after year passed away, and there came for the two in due portion the sorrows, the pain, the anxieties, and the labour that fill up human life. But, till her girl was seventeen, the Mother could say with truth and gratitude that Noel had never grieved her heart. She had her father’s strong, steady temper. Like him, she would get to reasons and neglect appearances, if they had no worthy justification. Like him, the currents of her mind swept from the first in that deep and resistless flow that broke neither into bitterness nor anger. And, to train such a heart, her mother was exactly the mother needed. Like the deep of the star sown sky, with its wide spaces and with the snow-white cloud drift, above plains where in the calm hush the buds are swelling into blossom—about the daughter’s life the influence of the mother dwelt; and her girl’s growth was like that of the lilies that toil not neither do they spin.

She had ways, had Noel, that a stranger prying into the home, would have pronounced odd; but to the two whose hearts dwelt there they were but sweet and natural.

Her father’s Study remained as he had left it, with his books and pictures where he had set them; and there the many treasures he had been fond of assembling round him, cunning bits of woodwork, curiously grained stones, specimens of rare seeds, all were still kept in the places they had occupied when, in the midst of them all, sat Jack Bronvola, before and after office hours, writing, thinking or talking to his wife, or to his little eleven year old daughter.

Noel took charge of the Study after his death; she kept the key; her fingers alone dusted and replaced the table ornaments; and the books were removed from the big shelves by her arms only. Here she often came and sat for hours; sometimes with her mother beside her, and sometimes alone so far as a bodily presence went. On the table, day after, day she placed fresh flowers, and there they glowed, a flame from the invisible Spirit of Life that moves in the earth’s dust and ashes, and changes death into life, the seed into the plant and from the murk of the clay calls the beauty of the flower. On the dead man’s table the flowers, varying with the varying season, but daily renewed by unfailing love, burnt like the fires that in some Temples of God are never allowed to quench themselves in darkness, but speak the thought of Him that never fails, though the generations fail and pass; and to that thought types the Mystery that is from everlasting to everlasting.

Often when mother and daughter sat in the early darkness of night—on the vine-covered verandah, the house lamps burning low behind them, and the big stars above, answering with their steady light, to the gas glitter that the town showed here and there to illumine her darkness—while to the noises that street and lane flung up were returned the reaches of abiding silence—often then Noel would place a second chair, her father’s, beside her mother’s, and leaving it empty, go back to her own, to talk, or sing, or listen; just as of old they had done, when they were three, and when the second rocking chair was not empty where it stood. At such hours He was again with them.

The great thoughts of Great Poets, of the students of Life, the Novelist, the Philosopher, the Prophet, these came and went in their talk, casting no shame, imposing no insignificance on the ordinary affairs of their immediate lives, of the house, the town, the school, of friends and acquaintances; the beggars that came to the gate, the noise that rose from the streets—mention of which mingled also with their evening talks. All themes seemed to meet and interblend without jar or collision; as why should they not; and as they will whenever we win to Nature’s way, and lay aside man’s affectation and convention—since every bit is part of the Whole, and the beggar feeding his life with his crust is an integral bit of a discussion of the Immortality of the Soul and of the Infinite. Life is the garment woven from hem to hem, without seam.

But Nature has her work to do with us and she does it, while flesh and blood endure, and in seed time and in harvest; and when, at sixteen, Noel closed such books as we learn from in the Schools, there was arising, that within her that came to lead her to the larger pages of the great Book of Life. That other learning was to begin for her, and to lead her further than it is the general lot of women to go; and as it brings truth that is far more valuable when gained, so is it learning far more dangerous in the gaining.

She stood erect at sixteen in a beauty that showed nor spot nor wrinkle. Truth and purity, and the fearlessness these two create, dwelt in the clearness of her brown eyes. The true proportion of all the face, from the fine, full forehead to the dainty but firm chin, flung the beholder into no need of resting admiration on any one feature. Complete and entire as it was, the beauty before him conquered his admiration at once; and in beholding Noel one never said:

What beautiful eyes; what perfect lips—but,

What a beautiful girl. What a Life.

She had what is rare with the West Indian, white, black or brown, features in all but perfect proportion; for the West Indian girl, often good-looking, is seldom beautiful, if in beauty we demand as an essential fine proportion of form and feature. She had, what must be said to be rare in all women, a spirit akin to Nature’s calm, and of that strength so unconscious, so full, set towards great issues, and working them out amid the ordinary and commonplace, without fret or jar, or sense of indignity.

Such a girl goes forth to be tried and tested by Life, and by the World’s rough hands,—to win only a fool’s reward—riches, position, praise from the lips of men, power; or, with these or without them, to receive honour, the praise that does not tabernacle in words, and the life eternal. Her fall, if she fall, shall be deep as Hell. If she endure, she indeed shall stand redeemed while yet in the flesh; and but a little lower than the angels that see God.

Noel’s first contact with outside life came when she left school. The Clergyman who had been her father’s friend asked her to become a Sunday School Teacher. Most commonplace of beginnings; but to be made great or insignificant as the soul is in the man or the woman. Life palpitates round a class in a City Sunday School; and through her class Noel entered the streets of the City of Humanity.

In her group of small black girls she began to touch Life, the Sores of Reality. Everyone of the half dozen existences that the school brought to her feet, led her away in a different direction It is not only when the road ascends Life’s sunny slopes that the interest of variation begins. Variety lies also below, in the shadow, on the lowlands of Poverty; the apparent sameness and monotony there are an appearance only; reality lies beneath these, a different thing to its covering.

And so a year passed; and Noel at seventeen was beginning to be talked of by many in Kingston; with admiration by some, with wonder by others. She was to all appearance a lonely girl, often seen by herself; in fact seldom otherwise; and that this should be the case with one so beautiful and so manifestly gifted made most men, and specially most women, marvel.

Sometimes she went about with her Mother; very occasionally she was seen with a friend; but for the most part she was alone, whether walking or driving. She was known in the lanes where her scholars lived; and on the country roads beyond Kingston, where she was wont to travel great distances alone. Yet she was unfriendly to no one. She gave none the feeling that she wished definitely to avoid man or woman; and perhaps the explanation of her proneness to be alone was that she never felt alone.

To her it was the most natural thing possible to sit by herself in the Study, or on the Verandah; to take her way through the City; or to roam along a quiet road, fully occupied with her thoughts and observations; with these about her as friends, and with a sense of fellowship and remembrance, she did not live a life dependent on words, and so showed in contrast with our modern life which is a great waste of Speech with oases of Silence.

Alone, Miss Bronvola? a young man would say to her sometimes, in surprize.

But I do not feel alone, she would reply, telling the simple truth.

Still, inevitably, she had to make friends; and one day she said;

Mother, I am making a friend.

Making? So the process is not complete? said her mother, smiling.

No, Mother, it is not. But you know who it is, and she told her mother his name.

Your father was his father’s friend, said her mother; and that for the present was the end of the matter.

But on an evening, a month later, while they both sat on the Verandah, to which Noel had just returned from playing dreamy, haunting music on the hall piano, a visitor came. It was the Young Man.

This is my friend, Mother, said Noel, who had gone forward to receive him in the Drawing Room: and thus the door was opened to many such evenings; and so that night the vacant chair was filled; but when her Friend left, though her Mother bade her goodnight and went to bed, Noel returned and sat for a long time beside her Father’s chair on the Verandah, with a spirit within her that was deeply, though vaguely, moved. But it was of her Father she thought; not of the Young Man, of whom she was making a friend. Thought of her Father was generally an atmosphere of her soul, rather than a distinct effort. But on this night her spirit was strangely stirred.

For long she sat in silence and perfectly still; then rising and leaning over the Verandah’s Vine-crowded rail she watched the street till it grew utterly empty, as the City sank towards midnight’s deeper silence and rest.

She came back and sat again beside her Father’s empty chair, leaning her head on its arm. Closing her eyes, she tried to fancy she felt his hand resting on her hair and caressing it. Seldom did she feel him not so sufficiently with her, but that it was needless to invoke him by the effort definite and direct: but tonight the yearning for more than spiritual communion; the longing to feel his hand of flesh and blood as once she had felt it; to see his brown eyes, fixed up on her, lighting slowly into smiles; to rise and kiss him; to hear him speak—the longing, moved her soul through and through; and it grew to an agony that was unendurable.

She loosened her hair; and it fell in long length, a dark flood about her white, tense face. The Moon, unclouded, rising above the trees poured its beams over those fine waves of hair that framed the face so full of strong, healthy life and beauty. She looked up with eyes bright with unshed tears. The eyes he had loved; the hair he had fondled; the eyes into which he had so often smiled; the lips which he had kissed; all the life of this beautiful creature that he had given, seemed beckoning him to return to her; to return to her from the land of the Spiritual and Unseen,—once again to put on Mortality; once again to inhabit flesh and blood. The call of a Soul yet in the body for a return of the Soul that has lain down the flesh and passed to the immortal. The call so terrible because so futile. The hour when the unreason of the flesh triumphs, and to its triumph itself brings defeat. Rushing to the very brink of the depth it hears only the echo of its cry returned from the abyss of Night. While Horror and Despair creep out upon it, ready to strike it from that dizzy edge. For there indeed Despair and Horror face the Soul in their most hideous shapes; like survivals of primeval monsters, no longer encountered where men live and move; but which, frightful in appearance and deadly in power, still make their lair among the flame-scarred crags and cliffs of desolate heights, regions all but never trodden by the foot of man. There on the sudden they meet the infrequent Intruder; and in the moment of that terrible meeting strike him dead.

Noel rose at length, and taking a Lamp went into the Study, and there her Father seemed to welcome her She took down book after book that he had used, reading the lines underscored here and there. Every now and then a sentence flashed like a sun-smiten jewel; and through the influence of these thoughts he seemed to come; gently leading her back from that mood so dangerous, so horrifying, when the flesh demands with fury what the flesh can never more have; leading her back to the paths that the spirit finds and treads from life to life through death. Her wildness sank; the agony of longing receded; and he who in that agony had seemed dying away from her into a far distance, now, in the calm and ebb of her passion, returned: in part, she was comforted.

Flung abroad from the old Church Tower, the single stroke proclaiming that the first hour of a new day was completed, rolled loudly and heavily over the sleeping City. It found Noel once again Mistress of her Soul.

III

BECKA

"When Thou rememberest of what toys

We make our joys."

Over that part of the fence which was mended with kerosene tins, cut open and nailed flat to hide the holes in the boards, Mrs. Gyrton looked into her sister Rosabella’s yard, and spoke her mind; of which a bit ran thus:

Which it is not, Rosabella, becausen you have pickney dat is good as buckra to look at, an’ its Poopa is a buckra out-an’-out—not becausen of dat,—you fe lick down me chicken.

Rosabella sat at her door nursing her baby; and she answered with the feeling of a General who knows he has the strongest position, and that the Other Man must excite himself a great deal, and fail in the end. She said:

You can’t done fe talk, noh—you nigger woman is___

Nigger woman, interrupted Mrs. Gyrton with such indignation as made her almost grind her teeth, for she was a passionate woman. Nigger! Oh, Lord, me God, what is dis? Me dead Mooma, me Poopa, dat Buckra put in a lockup, an’ to dis day I don’t know weh him deh, if him dead else him live—don’t Rosabella an’ I born one way? If I nigger, you nigger. What more nigger I can nigger dan you?

Rosabella went on looking at her baby as it tugged at her breast.

You can’t ebber tink say, causen you got baby fe Buckra you whiter dan me, you own born sister; one Teeta, one Mooma. You kyant fool so. You kyant fool so, Rosabella.

Well, said Rosabella returning to the chicken, why you can’t keep you chicken out a me yard?

Fe who yard? demanded Mrs. Gyrton. Former battles had taught her to note with very great nicety the words Rosabella employed.

Fe who yard? Weh you get yard; eider money fe buy yard?

For I an’ Mista Stanley, of course, replied Rosa with dignity.

Well, I tank God, an Big Missis who did teach me to be servant at Big House, dat I don’t get pickney nearly white. I is a married woman.

Married to a Carpenter, sneered Rosabella.

I married doh, an’ you lib in sin; an’ hell da hot fe you.

You is dah talk after what Buckra tell you, said Rosa disdainfully. Weh you husban’ is?

You know him gone look work in a Colon, said Mrs. Gyrton, a sudden touch of deprecation softening her voice; but her sister was implacable.

I know he is a drunkard man; an’ dat him lazy wuss dan man ebber lazy since man stan up an’ shake himself. I know him is a tief—

Tek you d___mout off him, broke in the wife, Causen I speak an tell you not fe kill me chicken you raise pon dis piece of an abusen.

I know seh, pursued the relentless one, I hear de two a’ you jam and blarse’, and blarse’ and jam, till dog outside stan a you gate mout an’ howl, an’ rooster start cackle and crow.

You got’s no right fe lick down me chicken, persisted the Carpenter’s mate doggedly. As regarded the Carpenter she knew the case was hopeless; but she stood on her undoubted rights as regarded the Chicken, and behind an entrenchment of undisputed fact.

Rosabella was quiet a minute, then she said;

Well, an’ I woulden lick it, if it would satisfy fe walk bout de yard an’ pick up what him fine’. But when it come to jump pon me drawing room table, I mus’ lick him; an’ I wish to King it was him neck I bruck, an’ not him leg lonely, when I fire de piece of wood at him.

"An’ suppose I did lick down you maugre dog when it come slap in a me kitchen, and tief out me bit and fippance tripe I just buy."

Dat you nebber see, returned Rosa, gathering her things together for a retreat; she noted something which as yet was unseen by her sister. That person all unconscious of developments in her rear burst out:

See him too jam well—but as Rosabella vanished, Mrs. Gyrton turned, for the gate of her yard had opened, and a white girl came across.

The face was a delightful one to contemplate at any time, as was the graceful young figure, lithe and erect: but the Girl seemed particularly attractive amid the sordid surroundings of that poor yard and beside the temper-furrowed and the harsh time roughened countenance of Mrs. Gyrton. The white girl with her finely moulded features, in her dress of simple white relieved by pink, appeared in the midst of the unlovely commonplace of that Kingston Slum like an Angel of the Ideal. It was Noel.

I have come only for a minute, Mrs. Gyrton, she began brightly, to wish you a Merry Christmas. It is the day after tomorrow, you know; and I won’t see you before the day comes. I have brought this for Rebecca. Can I see her?

Rebecca was out, and Mrs. Gyrton said so.

Well, replied Noel, that may be all the better. It is a doll, and I wish it to be quite a surprise. You must keep it wrapped up as it is, and give it to her on Christmas morning itself. Here it is; I will open it and show it to you at once. Then you must keep it wrapped and tied for Becka, till Christmas Day.

Mrs. Gyrton promised solemnly; and after a minute or two Noel departed. She was Rebecca’s Sunday School Teacher, and her very good friend.

Mrs. Gyrton, after seeing her ceremoniously to the gate, and carefully closing that rather shaky framework, came across to the weak place in the fence, and called:

Bella, Bella.

Her sister appeared; and the Carpenter’s wife enquired anxiously:

You tink seh she hear me when I did jam you jus’ now?

I can’t tell, said Rosabella languidly; and then with woman’s readiness to be unpleasant to woman, she added; but she did bound to hear you; de way you halla it.

I wish to Master she don’t, said Mrs. Gyrton. It all come troo you, Bella she added.

But now Rosabella was weary of battle, and only asked:

What dat she give you?

It is fe Becka.

A what?

China Baby, me lub.

Oh, Dolly, said Bella; for dolly it is in Whiteman’s phraseology and China Baby in the saying of the Black; Bella affected, as a matter of course the Whiteman’s style.

How it stan? she enquired.

Mrs. Gyrten on this promptly untied the string and displayed the doll, saying as she did so:

She beg me quite hard not to open it, neider gib it to Becka till Christmas Day; an’ I pramise her particular on de matter.

The two examined the Doll carefully and with curiousity. Blended with Rosabella’s curiosity, was the more directly practical desire to decide whether such a doll would be good enough for her atom of coloured humanity when it was old enough to have dolls.

But in Mrs. Gyrton the mood was more reflective and philosophic. She said:—

Bella, what you tink? Backra dont hab time to trow way; wen dem sit down good, good, and mek ting like ’a dis? It is white man and white woman got little or nutting to do.

Bella, busy with excursions into the Future, merely grunted; and indeed nothing beyond a grunt was needed in response to a remark embodying a truth so patent to the Negro at least; namely, that it is the lot of the Whiteman to play and enjoy himself, and of the Blackman to work and do only that which is useful. For in the West Indies, where the refrain of every White author is the negro won’t work, it is amusing to note that the opinion of the said Negro is set in just the opposite direction. Blackmen, he says, are born to work; but Backras to please themselves; and again, he says: It is only Backra got time to sit down an do nutting—and who get money all de same.

Mrs. Gyrton’s reflections next took a moral and religious turn.

"You know, seh, Rosabella, I dont tink Backra should make likeness of live Pickney so. Why, me King, dis China Baby you might tink it was da got alk. Him got han, him got eye; him can move dem; him got shoes; him to got stocking. Big Massa gib dem true true, pickney, what de debil deh mus’ go mek up play play one for. I bet you if it was Nigger shorance so Big Massa would a’ open him han so box fe we head off. But Backra a’ Young Massa; and Nigger a’ servant boy. All de same, I tell you, dem can tek it too far; an one a dis day Backra will tek it too far: and you will see a piece of a trouble. Me Master, but what dem Whiteman lef’ to do now? save and except build road and drive buggy go slap a heaven."

It is a good dolly, said Rosabella, who had now reached the end of her thoughts on the matter of the Doll’s value, and desired in thus expressing her opinion to convey the patent fact that she, and not her sister, was competent to pronounce on such a thing as a dolly.

The Carpenter’s Wife, still full of forebodings of the trouble in store for the shorance Backra who went too far with Big Massa, failed to perceive the intention of Rosabella’s remark; but, with the sadness of the Author who feels his best thoughts are not getting fairplay, she muttered the rest of her comments, doing her duty to the world by expressing them, but dismally certain that Rosabella was paying no attention whatever.

But de hard ting is dis, she continued, when Big Massa get mad an’ bex wid dem shorance Backra, and him tek him Volcano, else him Hurricane, else him Comic (Comet) an’ mek to bruck dem up and sweep dem out, him nebber stop to tink say Blackman deh all bout me foot an’ dat Blackman is not man fe do nonebody any harm; but de which and de way Big Massa bex him lick down eb’ry bit, black oh, white oh, brown oh; an’ dat’s how poor black people in Jamaica can’t get on.

Taking the doll she wrapped it in its paper covering. Entering her dirty, shabby, little house she laid the parcel on the table beside a china ornament, now chipped and broken, which long ago the Carpenter had bought to help furnish the house; for they were an ambitious couple in the days when they first launched on the somewhat treacherous seas of matrimony.

The parcel lay there waiting Becka’s coming; beside it was the little girl’s Bible, and a cup containing a few grains of the corn to which the Chicken, whose leg Bella had that day broken, was treated on state occasions.

Mrs. Gyrton gat her outside and continued to starch clothes.

Meantime where was Becka? And who was she?

A small black creature of nine Augusts, she was Mrs. Gyrton’s only child; the only child she had ever borne; a fact that was often emphasized by Bella and other enemies of the Carpenter’s wife, when, in wordy battles, the contention was, on Mrs. Gyrton’s part, that she, as a married woman, was set on high above her fellows; and, on their side, that she was after all only an imitator of white people’s ways; and a failure at that.

You is a one-pickney-an-no more woman, was Rosabella’s bitter taunt towards her sister; to be followed by the triumphant argument, that it was always and ever thus that Big Massa taught Black women the folly of marrying like Backra.

Each returning Sunday saw Becka blossom out into neatness and the glory of a clean dress; but she was a ragged little figure from Monday to Saturday. Her dress roughly made of a coarse blue cloth, was allowed to become very dirty. Buttons deserted their posts, and here and there the blue cloth itself was rent and torn, showing beneath the outer dress an under garment made of calico, that had once been white.

All through the day of this story Becka had been carrying water by the bucketful for her mother. Their yard had a pipe; but the pipe just then gave no water. The Water Commissioners desired a payment of Rates in arrears. Mrs. Gyrton could pay no arrears; and thereupon her pipe was locked off from the main.

Under such circumstances, the Law threatens that man with dire penalties who, having still his pipe with water therein, and seeing his brother in need, gives to the thirsty soul to drink. But it is perhaps as well that, threats notwithstanding, there are persons who will transgress the sacred law of the Kingston Water Commissioners; and from some of these, rich people unmindful of their duty to other rich people, Becka’s mother got water, transporting it by means of her little daughter, who, carrying the full bucket on her head, had tramped the morning hours away.

Then it was her duty to assist her mother hang out the wash clothes; to do which she had to lug from place to place a chair, wooden, very old and without a back; for with her dirty bare feet planted on the very bosom of Mother Earth, she was altogether too short to reach the clothes line; so she climbed up and stood on the chair as she arranged the wet shirts and the trousers and the jackets in the places where they should be, fastening each piece with a wooden clip, to hold it against the breeze’s persistent and mischievous attempts to fling it down on the dirty yard.

Hours of this brought the afternoon; and then once more, obedient to directions from her mother, Becka resumed her bucket and set out to carry more water.

She was away on this errand when her Sunday School Teacher came to the yard; and little did she think, as she loitered just then, resting on the rough board beneh beside the water-pipe, that by so doing she was missing the sight of her much beloved Miss Noel.

Gushing from the clean brass of the pipe, and splashing into the overflowing bucket and brimming, with bubble all afloat, over the grey tin side, pleasant was the sight and the sound of the tumbling water; pleasantly ran the soft murmur of the passing breeze in the leafy trees of the Garden near by, where, round and clean and sweet-looking showed the boles of the handsome Palms; and pleasantly, as the sunbeams found them out, shone, in rich, brave, glow, the Crotons ranged along the green grass lawn.

The tired little mortal sat and watched and listened and rested many minutes; meanwhile, at Becka’s home Miss Noel came and went.

IV

BECKA’S BUCKRA BABY

The swift mysterious instincts

* * * *

The fated and fatal moments

Becka, said her Mother, when Becka had returned to the yard, Miss Noel did come fe see you; and she bring you a China Baby. It is you Christmas, and she beg me quite hard not fe show you it till Monday; neider to tell you bout it; but Saturday done already; tomorrow Sunday come; next day Christmas. It come already, so I going ghee you it now, now; but you mind me, if she ax you a’ Sunday School tomorrow you must talk circumspect, and dont tell no lie pon me; but mek her to understand I not going ghee you it till Monday ’cording as I promise and she tell me; for I promise her very particular.

Yes, Mam, said Becka almost choking with the sudden joy of the thing.

Look in a de hall, on de table. It wrap up in piece a brown paper and it tie wid green string. When you eat you dinner done, tek it.

Yes, Mam, said Becka.

She emptied her bucket, took the little tin plate with her dinner and obediently eat the boiled banana, rice and salt fish, that she found thereon.

Wash you plate, mind, said her Mother, catching her eye as the last morsel of food disappeared; and Becka, washing the plate, placed it to drain.

Tek you China Baby den, said the Mother with a touch of the ceremonious. Becka took it.

Then for a whole hour she was blissfully and completely happy.

Touched by some softer feeling, her mother left her entirely alone. Rosabella came to the fence, by and by, and the Carpenter’s Wife cracked a joke with her.

Rosabella, we got backra baby, too, now, Becka got white baby same as you.

Praps she we’ have one fe true, time to come, said Aunt Rosabella graciously.

Who can tell, assented the mother of Rebecca; but I trus’ she will marry same as Backra do, an’ same as me.

Rosabella only laughed.

It was getting dark when Becka’s Mother called her.

"You mus’ go downtown, Becka. Mrs. Paterson tell me bout a shop out a’ Sollas weh dem got some salt pork cheaper dan anyways in Kingston. It is nighst de corner a’ you left han a de market. One Chinaman keep it; so you can’t loss it. Something do de pork, and him da sell it fe little and nutting. It